If the world is to confront the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change while meeting the demands of a rapidly-growing global population, it is vital that we find the balance between conserving and regenerating forest areas with economic growth for poverty reduction. This is what the World Bank’s work on forests aims to achieve.
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Germany commits an additional EUR 30 million to the Forest Carbon Partnership FacilityWashington, December 16, 2011 – In a sign of strong support for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through ... Show More +forest conservation, Germany has committed an additional EUR 30 million to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development signed the agreement, which makes Germany the biggest donor to the Facility, with total commitments of EUR 84 million (approximately USD 110 million). “Germany supports countries that actively and through their own efforts are taking this path towards climate protection. The FCPF is such an important instrument, because developing countries, donor countries, private business, indigenous peoples and civil society organizations cooperate on designing solutions for the protection of forests,” said Mr. Dirk Niebel, Germany's Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development. The FCPF, which was established following the G8 meetings in Heiligendamm, Germany in 2007, is a global partnership dedicated to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). This important inflow of funds to FCPF follows last week’s climate change negotiations in South Africa where nations agreed on a number of technical rules related to REDD+ implementation and also initiated a discussion on the role of the private sector in REDD+. The meetings demonstrated that despite the current financial crisis, climate change, forests and biodiversity remain high on the international agenda. To respond to forest country needs, the size of the Readiness Fund and Carbon Fund of the FCPF has been expanded to $300 million and $350 million, respectively. This expansion will enable the private sector and governments to contribute additional resources to the two funds. Show Less -

International policies to reduce carbon
emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+)
envisage the creation of financial incentive mechanisms that
reward for... Show More +est protection efforts and adequately compensate
those actors that face new costs. In order for REDD+ to
achieve these objectives, effective benefit sharing systems
will need to be implemented. Benefit sharing in REDD+ could
take a wide variety of forms depending on the policies used
to achieve REDD+ objectives. However, common to all
approaches is the need for clear processes to determine
actors' eligibility, the scale of benefits (and costs)
and the governance arrangements. While many of the general
concerns about benefit sharing within communities are widely
referenced (e.g., elite capture), relatively less is known
about how benefits are actually shared within communities
and the implications in terms of economic opportunities,
empowerment and vulnerability. There is also surprisingly
little empirical evidence on the implications of different
benefit sharing approaches for the poor in the different
examples reviewed; for example, in terms of questions about
whether benefits have actually compensated people
adequately, helped to lift people out of poverty or deal
with temporary shocks. These issues need to be much better
understood within emerging REDD+ projects and programs,
which in many cases have an objective to benefit those
affected by REDD+ implementation. Show Less -

International migration has increased
rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a
remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their
home c... Show More +ountries. This paper investigates the effect of the
rural economic growth brought about by migration and
remittances on Nepal's Himalayan forests. The authors
assemble a unique village-panel dataset combining remote
sensing data on land use and forest cover change with data
from the census and multiple rounds of living standards
surveys to test various inter-relationships between
population, economic growth and forests. The results suggest
that rural economic growth spurred by remittances has had an
overall positive impact on forests. The paper also finds
that remittances caused an increase in rural wages and an
increase in income, but a decrease in land prices.
Considered together, however, the relationship between
forests and remittances is driven largely through the income
channel, indicating that the demand for amenities provided
by forests in the rural Nepali setting may have been more
important than factor prices in influencing land use changes
for the period of the study. Show Less -

Carbon finance recognizes the
contribution of projects to mitigating climate change. To be
able to access carbon finance, projects can certify their
emission reduct... Show More +ions under a variety of standards, one of
which is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Project developers can sell their carbon credits either in
the voluntary or the regulated market. Since 2002, projects
from diverse sectors have been applying the CDM modalities
and procedures to generate Certified Emission Reductions
(CERs) that are traded in the carbon market
Afforestation/Reforestation (A/R) is one out of the 15
sectors that can generate carbon credits under the CDM. The
purpose of this document is to share the experience of the
BioCarbon Fund (BioCF) of the World Bank in developing and
implementing 21 A/R CDM projects in 16 countries. This
experience shows that the benefits associated with A/R CDM
projects support the livelihood of rural people and their
local environment in a significant manner. However,
depending on their capacity, projects may struggle with
getting credit certification and the associated benefits.
This report presents the opportunities and challenges A/R
CDM projects face and presents recommendations to facilitate
their design and implementation as well as to scale them up significantly. Show Less -

Characterization of preexisting flora is
an essential preliminary step for successful land
rehabilitation projects. This descriptive study was
undertaken in a fragm... Show More +ented dry tropical forest region in
Panama. Five different habitat types were selected: active
pasture, two-year and five-year abandoned pastures, forested
riparian zones, and a forest fragment. Species richness,
density, basal area, dispersal modes, and phenology of trees
as well as their uses were determined. Diversity of
pre-existing seed resources as well as natural regeneration
was poor after two and five years post cattle removal,
suggesting that at an early successional stage, enrichment
planting is necessary. Guazuma ulmifolia and Cordia
alliodora dominated the pastoral landscape, representing 63
percent of all inventoried trees in the active pasture. More
than half the trees within pastures (76 percent) had some
use, with shade for cattle as the most common reason for
leaving trees in the landscape. The largest trees and the
greatest diversity were found within the less managed
forested riparian zones because of inaccessibility and water
conservation. The pastoral landscape is largely shaped by
farm management as well as ecological selection process
which will in turn affect successional processes. Show Less -

Africa is a continent rich in natural
resources. Its land, water, and forests underpin the
sustained productivity of food crops and livestock on which
millions of A... Show More +fricans depend directly for their livelihood
and survival. These resources are major assets on which most
countries depend for economic growth and sustainable
development. In the face of growing climate change threats,
such as temperature rise and frequent drought and flooding,
African leaders recognize the crucial need to address
vulnerability as a development priority. To maintain the
ecosystem services in the Lake Chad Basin by conserving the
water and agrosylvo ecosystems and ensuring the
sustainability of use of resources in a context of energy
efficiency and food security. The program is designed to
address key lessons from the Strategic Action Program
developed in an earlier global environment facility (GEF)
project, notably: 1) the need for demonstration activities
and demonstration sites, and 2) the involvement of
communities in the implementation of activities on the
ground through participation and capacity building at local
level. The GEF program is built on the top of baseline
investment projects related to poverty reduction, food
security, rural infrastructures, and sustainable development
in the Lake Chad Basin. Focusing on biodiversity, land,
water, and forests, the program aims to improve the flow of
agro-ecosystem services, including the climate resilience of
ecosystems. In complement, the program promotes the
demonstration, the deployment, and the transfer of
innovative low carbon technologies in key sectors
(agriculture, fisheries, water management, as well as the
adoption of adaptation technology. The program will improve
the capacity of resilience and adaptation of local
communities in the Lake Chad basin. The program outcomes: i)
increased efficiency of approaches and tools related to the
consumption of natural resources and energy; ii)
sustainability and resilience of productive landscapes; iii)
strengthened capacity and knowledge for Integrated Water
Resource Management and Water Use Efficiency; and iv)
strengthened water and ecosystems management and improved
riparian collaboration. Show Less -

This report is based on seven background
papers comprising household studies, national level
analyses, and technical assessments. Household studies were
undertaken ... Show More +in Mozambique and Zambia to develop a clearer
picture of the role of Miombo woodlands in household
consumption. These studies were an outcome of intensive,
seasonal structured household surveys, which have formed the
core of the original work supported by this project
(technical annexes one, two, and three). Two national level
assessments were carried out, the first in Zambia on the
contribution of dry forests to economic development. This
assessment was derived from a synthesis of empirical
household studies, policy research, silvicultural and
ecological studies, and other primary sources (technical
annex four). The second country case study reviewed
community-based woodland management opportunities in
Mozambique and synthesized the results of other primary
studies (technical annex five). The author also reviewed
what is known about miombo silviculture and how management
systems could be improved or otherwise put in place to
increase productivity (technical annex six). Technical annex
seven focuses on policy options for improving management.
There are obvious geographic gaps in coverage in this paper.
Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were not
covered to any significant extent. This is partly because
the available body of miombo research largely excludes these
miombo-rich countries. It was also not our intention to
provide a comprehensive country-by country overview of the
status of miombo woodlands and the policies, institutions,
and legislation that are affecting their use. This
shortcoming notwithstanding, our efforts focused on teasing
out some of the complexities of miombo use and management in
the individual technical annexes. Show Less -

As donors pledge growing support for
protecting and managing forests to address climate change,
the question of how to pay tropical countries to reduce
their emissi... Show More +ons from deforestation and forest degradation
assumes greater urgency. Depending on the detailed
implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
forest Degradation (REDD+) at a national and international
level, forest nations may be able to secure funding from a
range of sources, including donors and multilateral funds (a
funded approach) and the voluntary and compliance carbon
markets (a carbon markets-based approach). These payments
are supposed to act as financial incentives that will
engender changes in behavior and policy frameworks, spur the
development of appropriate institutional arrangements and
needed technologies, and motivate both national and
international coordination to achieve REDD+ objectives.
Forest dependent communities will have to be actively
involved in translating many of the proposed REDD+
activities into practice. Key custodians of the world's
natural forests, these people will be expected to act as
forest managers, adopters of new technology, champions for
change, rule enforcers, and performance monitors. Forest
dependent communities will have to subscribe to the
motivation and objective of REDD+ for it to be successful
and sustainable. A country's benefit sharing mechanism
will determine who is involved in REDD+ activities and the
ways in which benefits are shared. Existing evidence
indicates that the establishment of a suitable benefit
sharing mechanism is achievable, provided realities on the
ground and a certain number of challenges are addressed
effectively. These challenges include, for example, being
able to identify REDD+ beneficiaries when carbon rights are
unclear, establishing a streamlined and well monitored
mechanism for transferring funds from the national (or sub
national) level to the local level, working effectively with
local institutions, preventing elite capture, and measuring
how carbon emissions have changed compared to a
predetermined baseline. Show Less -

Tanzania's land, local government
and forest laws mean that rural communities have well
defined rights to own, manage and benefit from forest and
woodland resources... Show More + within their local areas through the
establishment of village forests. This approach, known by
practitioners as Community Based Forest Management (CBFM)
results in the legal establishment of village land forest
reserves, community forest reserves or private forests. By
2008, 1,460 villages on mainland Tanzania1 were involved in
establishing or managing village forests covering a total of
over 2.345 million hectares. A further 863 villages are
currently involved in Joint Forest Management (JFM)
approaches within government forest reserves, in which
management responsibilities are shared between government
and local communities. 1.78 million hectares of forest
reserve under central or local government jurisdiction are
now under JFM arrangements. Since 2008, the Tanzanian
government has been making preparations for the
establishment of systems and structures for REDD Plus
(Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation). Tanzania is being supported in its
preparations by the World Bank's Forest Carbon
Partnership Facility (FCPF), UN-REDD plus and the Norwegian
Forests and Climate Initiative as well as a number of local
and international Non Government Organizations (NGOs). This
report has been prepared to provide inputs to the
development of policy processes currently evolving in
Tanzania regarding REDD plus. This review draws on almost
two decades of experience within Tanzania on the development
and establishment of Participatory forest management (PFM)
an approach which (like REDD plus), aims to achieve the
combined objectives of sustainable forest management with
secure rights, improved local forest governance and secure
livelihoods for forest-dependent communities. Show Less -

WASHINGTON, September 6, 2011—The Congo Basin forest ecosystem is the world’s second largest moist tropical forest, second only to the Amazon, and represents about one quarter of the globe’s remaining... Show More + closed canopy forest. It covers an area almost four times the size of France and spans six Central African countries: Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.The forests of the Congo Basin store a significant carbon stock (estimates range between 24 and39 GT of carbon) and thus serve as an important buffer against global climate change.Although deforestation rates (0.17 percent) in the Congo Basin are still low compared to large forest blocks in the Amazon or South-East Asia, these rates are expected to amplify drastically in the coming decades driven by a variety of forces such as industrial logging activities, road development, agricultural expansion (both for subsistence purposes and for commercial agriculture), as well as oil and mineral extraction.Curbing these accelerating deforestation rates means that less carbon will be released into the atmosphere, that habitat for endangered species is conserved, and that other important ecological forest functions (e.g. driving the cycle of rain, providing flood control) are maintained.At the global scale, tropical deforestation is estimated to contribute between 15 and 20 percent of global greenhouse emissions, adding to global warming and furthering the impacts of climate change. The international community is therefore planning for a financial incentive mechanism to help conserve tropical forests by compensating countries for their accomplishments in reducing tropical deforestation and forest degradation.The financial incentive system is known as the REDD+ mechanism (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and will form part of the future climate framework under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. But before they can take advantage of such a mechanism, Congo Basin countries must overcome significant institutional and technical capacity challenges.A regional approach to conservation and sustainable use of forest resourcesTo support the Congo basin countries, the World Bank in August 2011 approved a five-year project financed with a $13 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to strengthen countries’ capacities to meet the institutional and technical prerequisites necessary to benefit from a future REDD+ incentive mechanism.“This is clearly one of our most important and critical projects as we engage in supporting Africa on the climate change agenda and on helping Africans position themselves both to contribute to the global mitigation effort and to benefit from the expected enhanced flows of related financial resources,” said Yusupha B. Crookes, World Bank Director for Regional Integration in Africa.Congo Basin countries are taking a regional approach to preparing themselves for participation.“Regional integration gives countries a greater ability to influence international climate negotiations and helps them combine resources to adopt cutting-edge methodologies and technologies for forest and carbon monitoring,” said Carole Megevand, World Bank Task Team Leader for the project. “It also gives countries the ability to share the cost of capacity building, as well as analytical and field work, and prevents the problem of deforestation from simply moving from one country to another.”The project is implemented by the Central Africa Forests Commission (COMIFAC), a regional institution mandated with coordinating forest management. “COMIFAC is responsible for project implementation, but participating countries have a dominant role in decision-making,” Megevand said.The subsidiarity principle is a key feature of the project design. This means the regional approach will complement a number of globally-financed, country-level initiatives on forest management. It will provide a regional umbrella to help coordinate policy reform across the six countries towards the shared goal of reducing deforestation and forest degradation.Measuring the carbon content of Congo Basin forestsInternational negotiations on REDD+ continue around the notion of “carbon credits”, a system to compensate countries for their performance in reducing the release of forest carbon into the atmosphere.Compared to other globally significant forest ecosystems, the Congo Basin countries have a glaring gap of information on the carbon content of their forests. This massive uncertainty could eventually prevent carbon finance payments to individual countries.“The key outcome of this project will be the availability of tools to accurately and reliably measure the carbon content of tropical forests in Central Africa,” said Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough, World Bank Sector Manager of Environment. “As knowledge of the carbon content will most likely be a prerequisite to accessing future performance-based REDD+ payments, the participating countries will be ahead of that curve.”About the Congo Basin forest ecosystemMore than 24 million people live in the Congo Basin forest area. Timber and minerals found in the forests contribute significantly to export and fiscal revenues. But aside from its economic significance, the rainforests also play a critical role for global biodiversity conservation with plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. The forests are also the green lung of the African continent and provide vital regional and global ecological services: providing water services, regulating climate, and driving a cycle of rain. The forests metabolize carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store a huge amount of carbon in the abundant vegetation. Show Less -

CAPE TOWN, 1 July 2011 – The Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), a partnership of five multilateral development banks, approved $444 million in grants and near-zero-interest loans to support Cambodia, Mo... Show More +zambique, Nepal, St. Lucia, and Zambia in their efforts toward national-level climate resilience. Also in Cape Town two new investment plans were endorsed for Burkina Faso and Democratic Republic of Congo for a total of $90 million in grants. Under the CIFs’ Pilot Program for Climate Resilience, five nation-wide strategic programs for climate resilience were approved: $105 million for Cambodia to improve irrigation, flood and drought management, climate-resistent agriculture and forestry in coastal areas, and mainstream climate resilience into development planning; $102 million for Mozambique to improve the capacity of roads and coastal cities to withstand climate change, transform their hydro-meteorological services, and enhance climate-resilient agricultural production and food security; $110 million for Nepal to build climate resilience of watersheds in mountain regions, build resilience to climate-related hazards, and build climate-resilient communities through private sector participation; $17 million for St. Lucia to build national climate resilience (as part of the Caribbean Regional Program); and $110 million for Zambia to strengthen climate resilience in Barotse and the Kafue River Basin. The total $444 million funding envelope for these five countries is nearly half grants ($207 million) with $237 million in near-zero-interest credits. These countries join Bangladesh, Grenada, and St. Vincent and Grenadines as the first eight countries in the world to create Strategic Programs for Climate Resilience (SPCRs) linked to their development plans with CIF support. “The CIF's Strategic Climate Fund gives priority to highly vulnerable least developed countries, including the small island developing states. As momentum grows for climate action on the ground, the CIFs can be a real game-changer," said Admed Shafeeq Ibrahim Moosa, the Presidential Envoy for Science and Technology from the Maldives, and co-chair of the CIF’s Strategic Climate Fund, at the end of the first week of meetings. Under the CIF’s Forest Investment Program, two new investment plans were endorsed: $30 million in grant funding for Burkina Faso to decentralize sustainable forest management, encourage participatory protection of state forest reserves, and integrate information-sharing; $60 million in grant funding for Democratic Republic of Congo to address deforestation and degradation, provide small grants to promising small-scale REDD+ initiatives, and engage the private sector in REDD+. “This week we’ve seen impressive strategic plans from the many developing countries who want to partner with the Climate Investment Funds. Now even more countries are queuing up. At this point, nearly all CIF funds have been allocated and as we press forward on implementing these important projects, we are seeing a need for additional financing – at least to cover the gap between today and when the Green Climate Fund is fully operational,” said Andrew Steer, World Bank Special Envoy for Climate Change. During the Clean Technology Fund meetings, the Government of India expressed interest in submitting an Investment Plan soon. Despite a current shortage of funds, the Climate Investment Funds have invited India to prepare an Investment Plan that will be reviewed in November 2011. “We estimate that current programs in the Clean Technology Fund will result in 1.56 billion tons of CO2 reductions or avoidance. If and when India partners with the CTF we will see even more dramatic CO2 reductions being financed by the Climate Investment Funds,” Steer added. Other Recent Financing DecisionsAs announced last week during the first CIF Committee Meetings, the CIFs’ Clean Technology Fund also approved $197 million for the 125 megawatt Ouarzazate I Concentrated Solar Project in Morocco, a large-scale investment that is expected to help bring down the costs of concentrated solar and create as many as 80,000 jobs in Morocco by 2020. This solar power plant is the first project in a Middle East and North Africa Regional Plan that will eventually triple today’s global investments in concentrated solar power. Morocco is partnering with the African Development Bank and World Bank, two partners in the Climate Investment Funds, on this project. “Despite all of these efforts, the bottom line is that there is an urgent need to improve access to climate finance at the scale required for transformational impact in Africa and put in place mechanisms that can best respond to Africa’s needs,” said Bobby Pittman, Vice President for Infrastructure, Private Sector and Regional Integration at the African Development Bank. The Morocco solar project was approved just days after the World Bank Board of Directors approved US$47.12 million under the PPCR to help Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines improve the safety of their buildings from the impacts of climate change and increase their public institutions’ capacity to assess natural risks. Rehabilitating vulnerable infrastructure is a central part of the Caribbean Regional Program and ties directly to PPCR’s focus on vulnerable countries and small island developing states. Additional donor support to the CIFs was also pledged recently to help scale-up renewable energy in low-income countries. Norway announced a 150 million krones pledge (equal to $US 28 million) and Australia announced a pledge of 25.5 million Australian dollars (equal to $US 27 million). The financing announcements made during the annual CIF Committee Meetings coincided with the 2011 CIF Partnership Forum, a 2-day public dialogue co-hosted by the African Development Bank and co-chaired by South Africa. Speeches were made by South African Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, and South African Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. The Forum attracted more than 500 CIF stakeholders from 79 countries to assess progress on CIF investments, explore ways to scale-up countries’ impact on climate change, and share lessons learned. More than 70 civil society representatives attended the event with many more participating online to discuss green jobs, biodiversity-smart planning for wind farms, and how to finance large-scale, transformative investments. The event featured sessions on private sector engagement, scientific updates, and climate modeling. Discussions were held on the significance of CIF governing bodies’ equal representation of developed and developing countries, on innovative financing, on national-level planning, and on the importance of involving a range of participants in decision-making. “Through the CIFs we’re learning important lessons on climate action and helping inform the discussions on climate finance. It’s clear that Africa needs financing that reflects its priorities and challenges in responding to climate change,” Pittman said. The $6.5 billion Climate Investment Funds are a global partnership of the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, InterAmerican Development Bank, and the World Bank Group. Show Less -

In this report, the authors study the
experiences and lessons learned on the use of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) to promote good forest
governance... Show More +, and identify ways modern technology can be
applied to meet the challenges of improving forest
governance and achieving sustainable forest management. The
authors believe that countries and their development
partners can make their forest governance reforms more
effective and inclusive through the use of information
management and technology. The main focus in the report is
on institutions how they interact with stakeholders and how
their performance can be strengthened. The authors are
trying to fill the gap in which experiences from various
forest governance pilots are not widely shared. They do not
cover forest inventories or technical resource assessment;
extensive literature on these topics is available from
various national and international research institutions and
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). They do not
present all possibilities and current uses of ICT in forest
governance. Their goal is to demonstrate the range and
diversity of approaches, and the feasibility of using
technology to promote forest governance. The report covers
both 'small' and 'big' ICT. Small and
more affordable ICT applications are often based on consumer
devices for which the underlying technology is available
ready-made from commercial sources. These devices can be
used to interact with the public and in professional
applications. The big ICT dimension includes professional
applications that are tailor-made and often system-based and
expensive. The report does not try to provide solutions for
specific problems, but it demonstrates the extent to which
information management is an essential part of sector
reform. Development professionals dealing with forest
governance can use their findings in consultations with
partner countries and to help plan interventions. The report
begins with a discussion of recent developments in the
governance discourse to set the stage and show how the
definition of forest governance has evolved. The authors
then describe recent developments in access to ICT services,
particularly in rural areas, and how information is used in
the forest sector. There has been much concern about
in-country digital divides; while they still exist, the past
few years have seen an unprecedented increase in access to
technology in rural areas. Show Less -

This report and guidance note has been
prepared by the program on forests (PROFOR), a multi-donor
partnership housed at the World Bank, in order to build a
body of ... Show More +knowledge and global good practice to support public
expenditure reviews (PERs) in the forest sector.
Understanding the processes that drive public expenditure
allocations, as well assessing the efficacy of the
expenditures undertaken, is crucial for ensuring that
forests are properly and sustainably managed. The report
reviews experience from a large number of forestry,
agriculture, and related sector expenditure reviews. Based
on this literature review, a set of principles and
procedures have been developed to guide and support future
public expenditure analyses in the forest sector. The report
discusses challenges that are specific to the forest sector.
Forest policy objectives tend to be a compromise between
competing objectives, ranging from timber production by the
private sector to conservation interests to resources for
local communities and livelihoods. Balancing these competing
objectives is a complex issue. In addition, where corruption
and political interference are endemic, there are often
significant gaps between policy plans and what is actually implemented. Show Less -

The objective of the Functional Review
of the Environment, Water and Forestry sector (FR-EWF) is to
help the Government of Romania (GoR) develop an action plan
for ... Show More +implementation over the short- and medium-term to
strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector
administration, and provide input to the Government National
Reform Program (NRP 2011- 2013) and beyond, especially in
relation to those functions that support Romania's
implementation of key EU directives, help speed up
convergence with the environmental Acquis, remove
constraints to EU structural funds absorption, and manage
the country's natural assets sustainably. The report is
presented in two volumes, with the first volume providing an
integrated view of the sector as currently configured around
environmental management, water, and forestry, and the
second volume dedicated to a detailed review of the forestry
sector. Volume 1 is organized as follows: Part I provides an
overall introduction, objectives and context of the review;
Part II summarizes the key challenges facing the sector,
focusing on the three main sub-sectors, environmental
management, water, and forestry; Part III reviews the
strategic framework of the sector, pointing out areas where
improvements will be needed; Part IV reviews the
configuration of the sector, its organization and
performance; Part V assesses the salient cross-cutting
issues; and Part VI presents the key recommendations. Volume
2, dedicated to the forestry sub-sector, is organized along
the four assessment areas. Show Less -

The objective of the Functional Review
of the Environment, Water and Forestry sector (FR-EWF) is to
help the Government of Romania (GoR) develop an action plan
for ... Show More +implementation over the short- and medium-term to
strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector
administration, and provide input to the Government National
Reform Program (NRP 2011- 2013) and beyond, especially in
relation to those functions that support Romania's
implementation of key EU directives, help speed up
convergence with the environmental Acquis, remove
constraints to EU structural funds absorption, and manage
the country's natural assets sustainably. The report is
presented in two volumes, with the first volume providing an
integrated view of the sector as currently configured around
environmental management, water, and forestry, and the
second volume dedicated to a detailed review of the forestry
sector. Volume 1 is organized as follows: Part I provides an
overall introduction, objectives and context of the review;
Part II summarizes the key challenges facing the sector,
focusing on the three main sub-sectors, environmental
management, water, and forestry; Part III reviews the
strategic framework of the sector, pointing out areas where
improvements will be needed; Part IV reviews the
configuration of the sector, its organization and
performance; Part V assesses the salient cross-cutting
issues; and Part VI presents the key recommendations. Volume
2, dedicated to the forestry sub-sector, is organized along
the four assessment areas. Show Less -

This report marks the third year of
implementation of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
(FCPF). The first three years have seen the development of
the FCPF and... Show More + Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation (REDD plus ) at the global and national
levels. Remarkable progress was achieved in the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an
international REDD plus partnership was established, and
global initiatives such as the FCPF, the UN-REDD programme,
the forest investment programme and the Global Environment
Facility (GEF's) new Sustainable Forest Management
(SFM)/REDD plus window were set up to assist forest
countries in tackling the REDDplus challenge. Under this new
international framework, dozens of forest countries have
started formulating broad strategies and investing in
activities on the ground. Show Less -

This book provides a synthesis of key
themes and current knowledge about the links among forests,
armed conflict, poverty, and various aspects of state
fragility. T... Show More +he main themes addressed are: how predatory,
incapable, or absent states are fragile in different ways,
and their diverse relationships to forests and conflict; the
mechanisms by which forests facilitate or prolong conflict,
including financial flows from logging to state and
non-state belligerents, the use of forests as patronage, the
traffic of weapons by loggers, and the employment of
belligerents by logging companies for security; the impact
of conflict and fragility on forests and forest livelihoods,
with a focus on cross-sectoral issues associated with
managing forests after conflicts end; and the focus of
reform in post conflict interventions to more effectively
protect forests and forest-based livelihoods, and to
mitigate further conflict. Because forests have multiple
and often competing constituencies for commercial,
subsistence, and cultural uses, they are frequently at the
center of struggles over control of access and use. While
these contests can be widespread, they tend to be
nonviolent, or if violence breaks out it tends to be
localized. Indeed, the quantitative evidence shows that
countries with large amounts of forest (either in total area
or as a proportion of national territory) are no more likely
to experience civil war than those without forest. There is,
however, an association between the likelihood of conflict
and the size of the forest industry. And for countries
experiencing civil war that have other extractive resources
available, the abundance of forest increases the duration of
the conflict. This effect is heightened with increasing
accessibility of forest. That is, forests do not cause
conflict, and armed conflicts tend not to be fought over
forests. Instead, armed conflicts are often exacerbated by
certain aspects of forest use, especially when forests are
lootable (requiring low cost and low skill for extraction). Show Less -

The Program on Forests (PROFOR) is a
multi-donor collaborative partnership. Its goal is to
strengthen forest's contribution to poverty reduction,
sustainable econom... Show More +ic development and the protection of
global and local environmental values. The purpose of PROFOR
is to contribute to the capacity of institutions and
stakeholders in forest policy processes to address more
effectively poverty alleviation, national economic
development, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and
sustainable forest management. PROFOR describes the
initiatives it supports as activities. By early 2011 more
than 80 activities had received financial and in some cases
technical support since PROFOR was launched in 2003. This
report describes the results of an evaluation/ex post review
of 12 selected PROFOR Activities designed to help develop a
better understanding of PROFOR's impacts. These
activities all focused on forest's roles in mitigating
poverty in landscape preservation and rehabilitation.
Conducted by a team of consultants, the evaluation was
commissioned by the PROFOR Secretariat at the request of its
Advisory Board as a contribution to strengthening
performance monitoring. The specific objective of this
evaluation which did not include field work was to assess
the policy and other impacts of selected PROFOR activities
that had been completed or were close to completion. Show Less -

The Program on Forests (PROFOR) is a
multi-donor collaborative partnership. Its goal is to
strengthen forest's contribution to poverty reduction,
sustainable econom... Show More +ic development and the protection of
global and local environmental values. This report describes
the results of an evaluation/ex post review of 9 selected
PROFOR activities from Central America, carried out to help
develop a better understanding of PROFOR's impacts.
Conducted by a team of consultants, the evaluation was
commissioned by the PROFOR Secretariat at the request of its
Advisory Board as a contribution to strengthening
performance monitoring. The specific objective of this
evaluation was to assess the policy and other impacts of
selected PROFOR activities that had been completed or were
close to completion. The evaluation included brief field
visits to Guatemala and Honduras during January 2011. Show Less -